


Anywhere Away With You

by Bellelaide



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Captain America - Freeform, Infinity Wars, M/M, mcu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellelaide/pseuds/Bellelaide
Summary: “Feel the same as before. I remember - bits and pieces, dunno, feel a bit groggy. Had a long sleep. Why the beard, Stevie? You got a dame likes hairy men?”Steve looked down at his legs. “Easier. Easier than shaving and grooming an’ all that. You should see my toenails.”





	Anywhere Away With You

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little scribble of how I vaguely wish it would go between Steve and Bucky in Infinity Wars. 
> 
> Typos and mistakes are because I’m incredibly lazy

The tips of his fingers felt like a TV that couldn’t pick up channels, or one of those old radios you couldn’t programme no matter what you did. They were like white noise, the same kind that was roaring in his ears. 

His legs felt like sandbags, heavy and immovable. Still he managed to make them walk somehow, following a team of scientists and T’challa down a corridor to where the cyro tank had been for the last few years. 

They had devised a cure, he’d been told, for the mess Hydra had made of Bucky’s brain. They were confident it was going to work. They wanted Steve to be there when he woke up, so they’d flown him out the night before. 

Steve found it interesting that they’d perfected the cure right as things were heating up out in the world with Thanos. He didn’t have the energy to ask questions though, and besides, he wanted Bucky back regardless of the circumstances. 

They rounded a corner into the room and Steve felt light headed looking at the Tank. He was equal parts furious and indebted with the universe - for bringing him back to Bucky so many times, even when neither of them deserved this many miracles, but also for taking him away so many times and forcing Steve to keep living without him. 

Yet here he was again, being brought back to Bucky. He considered the way life had brung them together so many times. He wondered if they were made of the same atoms, and couldn’t be apart as an act of science, or if just as the sky is blue and leaves fall off trees they just, were. 

“Are you ready Captain?” 

Steve turned to T’challa who was observing him carefully. He nodded once, and turned back to where the scientists were preparing to unfreeze the tank. On Steve’s cue they pressed the button and the temperature began to rise, going carefully so as not to overwhelm Bucky’s body. 

They were saying things to each other, moving around and taking notes, preparing the serum they were going to inject into Bucky’s neck that they hoped would right most of the torture he’d undergone. Steve didn’t understand the science of it nor did he make an attempt to understand: he trusted T’challa and didn’t pretend to be an expert on the brain or modern medicine. 

Bucky had been strapped into the tank both for his safety and that of everyone in the room. When they were content with the temperature of his body, they brought him round to consciousness. Steve couldn’t breathe. 

Bucky’s eyes opened slowly, and one of the scientists spoke. 

“James Barnes, my name is Dr Akuada and I’m going to take you through a series of steps to help make you better. You’re in Wakanda, and the date is May 21st, 2018. Do you understand?” 

Bucky didn’t move at first, eyes blankly on the doctor. He scanned the room a second later and his eyes fell on Steve. There was no immediate recognition, but there was something. Steve nodded and then so did Bucky. 

“Very well. We’re going to insert a compound infused with allosteric ligands into your blood stream and hope that this will give you access to your memories, whilst allowing you the chance to be unharmed by trigger words that could reset your memory.” 

They stuck some pads and wires onto a few spots on his body and then they did it, just like that. Someone inserted a needle into Bucky’s neck and he didn’t even wince, just closed his eyes. The doctors gathered round a computer that must’ve been feeding back vitals or brain activity, and Steve stood there, like a big piece of furniture. 

Steve didn’t know how long they waited, but eventually someone started calling Bucky again. 

“James? Are you with us?”

Bucky didn’t respond, didn’t open his eyes. The doctor tried again, and when Bucky was motionless she turned to Steve. “He might respond to a familiar voice.” 

Steve looked from the doctor to the tank and swallowed. “Buck?” He croaked, voice shamefully weak. 

Bucky’s brows furrowed a little, and Steve pushed again. “Bucky.” 

Bucky’s eyes opened and looked around slowly, once again emotionless. Steve could feel the tension in the room, his own heart thundering - if this didn’t work, if he had to walk away empty handed again - 

“Steve?” 

The collective sigh around the room wasn’t registered by Steve, but it would’ve been loud enough to hear in the corridor outside. They didn’t give Steve a chance to speak again, jumping in instantly. 

“James, we’re going to say some words to you now. You don’t need to do anything in return.” The doctor consulted a clip board, took a breath, and started speaking again. “Longing.” 

Steve wasn’t really listening as they said them, eyes fixed on Bucky’s face. Bucky was staring back at him, and he wasn’t reacting to the triggers, and down Steve’s arms a thousand satellites started reporting signs of life. He didn’t quite register the rest of the words they were saying or the menial things associated with defrosting a body that they were taking care of. 

This wasn’t even the longest they’d gone apart - but it’d been hard and Steve was exhausted and he was old, really old, and things were dangerous now and he was fed up of trying to watch his own back out there because really, if he or Bucky weren’t doing it, no one else was. You can only count on your own atoms to care about you properly, after all. 

“James?” 

Bucky’s eyed snapped back to the doctor. 

“We said, do you have any preference on a new arm? How would you like it to look? You don’t need to make any decisions right now, we can discuss it in more detail later -“ 

“Can you untie me?” Bucky’s voice was scratchy and unused but it was his and Steve had never, ever, in a thousand life times, been good enough to hear it so many times. 

They moved to untie him carefully, checking there were no chafes where the straps had been. Then he was lead to a bed, where he was checked over by multiple people at once and fussed over and inspected and the whole time Steve just stood there, waiting his turn to be with the only other thing in the world that shared his history. 

“Are you okay?” T’challa put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve looked at him. 

“I’m great. I’m - thank you. Thank you, so much -“ 

“You do not need to thank me. I did what was right. And now we must face Thanos together - I am only sorry you cannot be reunited under better circumstances.” 

Steve smiled tightly. “It is what it is. I’ll take him under any circumstance.” 

It wasn’t long before the doctors were finishing up their examinations and measurements and T’challa was asking them to give Bucky and Steve a minute alone. 

The team dawdled their way out of that room for what felt like hours. Steve wanted to shove each one individually out the window. But then they were gone, and he was on his own with Bucky, and he was one part of a whole again. 

He was stood where he had been standing since he first came in, and Bucky was sat on the examination bed, hands folded in his lap. 

“Hello, you,” he said, and Steve was crossing the room as quickly as he could without running, falling to his knees in front of Bucky and pushing his face into the side of Bucky’s thigh. Bucky put a hand in Steve’s hair and laughed gently. “Hey, hey, don’t remember you being so needy. Don’t remember you with a ton of facial hair neither, for that matter.” 

Steve sat back on his heels and looked up at Bucky. “It’s so damn hard to be on my own, Buck. Gets harder every time. It’s - it’s draining. And christ, the world, it’s so messed up - we need to - we have to fight, once they get you all fixed up, we have to go and fight again, and I’m not complaining, God, I don’t have any right to complain, but I never understood why we couldn’t just be normal people who weren’t cannon fodder, y’know, just -“ 

“Steve, c’mere, stop that,” Bucky was saying, pulling Steve up and standing to pull him into a hug, closing their bodies together and letting their matching atoms sing with happiness at being reunited. “Don’t talk like that. You ain’t cannon fodder, Stevie, you’re the cannon.” 

“What do you feel like, Buck? You remember much?” They separated and sat down on the gurney, knees knocking and fingers brushing. 

“Feel the same as before. I remember - bits and pieces, dunno, feel a bit groggy. Had a long sleep. Why the beard, Stevie? You got a dame likes hairy men?” 

Steve looked down at his legs. “Easier. Easier than shaving and grooming an’ all that. You should see my toenails.” 

Bucky groaned. “That’s disgusting. Personal hygiene, it’s important. No one been taking care of you huh? Wait till I see them, Steve.” 

“They been great, Buck. Honestly, better than I deserve, askin’ them to make the sacrifices I did. I feel... tired. Too old, y’know, for this. Maybe my body isn’t ageing but my mind is and man, I’m tired. And being without you, it’s worse. So I forgot to shave a couple times a week, and it stuck around, the beard. I was worried you wouldn’t recognise me with it actually, but I didn’t have time - “ 

“I’d recognise you anywhere Stevie, could recognise your teeth mixed with a barrel of dentures. Sometimes I think, us, we’re like - y’know how twins come out of the same foetus or whatever? Sometimes it feels like that happened with us, c’ept we ain’t related, which I’m glad about, cos I don’t love you like that, not really.” 

Steve looked at Bucky’s lips. “Can I?” 

Bucky closed the gap and kissed Steve, chastely and with the confidence of someone who’s known a person for almost a century both inside and out yet still isn’t sure of what they can take. 

“When this is over - when we’ve cleaned up the world again, you and me - what’s say we retire, get a place, get a cat or something. Maybe we’ll be bored and maybe we’ll get on each other’s nerves and maybe we’ll miss the way it feels when you squeeze the life right outta someone, I don’t know, but we - I wanna grow old with you Buck, wanna retire and have spots on the sofa that are just ours and have a favourite mug. Can we do that?” 

“Take me anywhere away with you Stevie. Tell me what the POA is and I’m there. And keep the beard for a while, would ya? It’s doing things for me.” 

Steve kissed Bucky again, taking care to brush his face against Bucky’s smooth one. He wrapped a hand around Bucky’s wrist and found the pulse there, letting its rhythm soothe him into complete calm. 

“Alright then Cap, who’s ass do we have to kick this time? Sorry motherfucker’s getting in the way of my retirement.” 

“Let’s find T’challa. We should brief together.” 

——- 

They found him in a situation room a few floors up, talking with a counsel animatedly. 

“Captain Rogers, Barnes - the situation is grave. Thanos’ troops will march on Wakanda. We must prepare at once. We are asking for your help, and that of anyone else you can gather.” 

“The stones - he has them?” 

“Almost all of them. We will meet him with force.” 

One of the counsellors raised a hand. “Sir, I think it would make more sense to evacuate - not flee, as you put it, but choose our battles carefully. We cannot meet the power Thanos has garnered, not even with the help of Captain America. If you would just consider - “ 

“Evacuate the city. Engage all defences.” T’challa paused. “And get this man a shield.”


End file.
